death, while lying under the influence of that magical drug
which, soothing the physical frame, mysteriously operates on the subtler element
in man, he was heard to murmur words inexplicable to his attendant - »Billy
Budd, Billy Budd.« That these were not the accents of remorse, would seem clear
from what the attendant said to the Indomitable's senior officer of marines,
who, as the most reluctant to condemn of the members of the drum-head court, too
well knew, though here he kept the knowledge to himself, who Billy Budd was.
 

                                      XXV

Some few weeks after the execution, among other matters under the head of News
from the Mediterranean, there appeared in a naval chronicle of the time, an
authorised weekly publication, an account of the affair. It was doubtless for
the most part written in good faith, though the medium, partly rumour, through
which the facts must have reached the writer, served to deflect, and in part
falsify them. Because it appeared in a publication now long ago superannuated
and forgotten, and is all that hitherto has stood on human record to attest what
manner of men respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd, it is here
reproduced.
 
        »On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence took place on
        board H.M.S. Indomitable. John Claggart, the ship's master-at-arms,
        discovering that some sort of plot was incipient among an inferior
        section of the ship's company, and that the ringleader was one William
        Budd, he, Claggart, in the act of arraigning the man before the captain
        was vindictively stabbed to the heart by the suddenly drawn sheath-knife
        of Budd.
            The deed and the implement employed sufficiently suggest that though
        mustered into the service under an English name the assassin was no
        Englishman, but one of those aliens adopting an English cognomen whom
        the present extraordinary necessities of the Service have caused to be
        admitted into it in considerable numbers.
            The enormity of the crime and the extreme depravity of the criminal,
        appear the greater in view of the character of the victim, a middle-
        aged man, respectable and discreet, belonging to that minor official
        grade, the petty officers, upon whom, as none know better than the
        commissioned gentlemen, the efficiency of His Majesty's Navy so largely
        depends. His function was a responsible one; at once onerous and
        thankless, and his fidelity in it the greater because of his strong
        patriotic impulse. In this instance, as in so many other instances in
        these days, the character of the unfortunate man signally refutes, if
        refutation were